McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Fanfic richer or poorer?
cephis:
I think that using an authors universe but not their charecters is best for a jumping off point for a writer trying to find their own voice. As long as the original author's characters are not in it I think of it as constructive non-publishable work of fiction. If someone is writing a spin-off of anothers writers established work for pay it is simmiler to fan fic that they are trying to fit what they contribute into an exsiting framework and is not a one-off of what is the universe
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: Murphy's Stunt Double on March 18, 2008, 12:30:53 AM --- Anyway, the subject of it is that EVERYTHING written currently is plagiarized from somewhere else. There's nothing original under the sun, my friend.
--- End quote ---
I would say that this is provably false by looking at, say, Greg Egan, Ted Chiang, or Peter Watts, who are telling shapes of stories that are uniquely new built around ideas that are uniquely new. [ Though Watts less of the time than the other two. ] Unless you want to use a definition such as "This story has people in it" as plagiarising the idea of "people", which strikes me as meaningless.
--- Quote ---Who owns the copyright to a plotline? The one who wrote it down first, NOT the one who thought it up first.
--- End quote ---
There is no copyright to a plotline, just to a specific instance of that plotline.
There are arguments, for example, that all stories have one of three fundamental plots. I think that's rubbish, myself, because even if it were true, that is defining your fundamental plots so broadly that they become essentially meaningless and therefore useless as concepts.
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: cephis on March 18, 2008, 01:58:20 PM ---Personally, I was always a fan of The Destroyer novels; they are up to the high 130's. The books after a while were Ghost Written by some more or less talented writers. I would feel comfortable writing a fan fiction.
1. That the last 80 novels, with some exceptions, have been published fanfic.
2. The characters are static, they do not really change.
--- End quote ---
The particular genius of the better Destroyer novels is, that, in the way that really good SF builds up a world by implications of little clues and how they fit together rather than by stopping to lecture you, some of the contracted later Destroyer novels are using that technique to build characterisation in.
Noey:
There is no copyright to
--- Quote from: neurovore on March 18, 2008, 03:33:33 PM ---There is no copyright to a plotline, just to a specific instance of that plotline.
--- End quote ---
Right, copyright belongs to specific ideas. A boy has an adventure before learning he's a prince. That's not something you can hold up in copyright court. It's pretty much a classic plot at this point in literature. It's the more specific you get. If I wrote a story like that, and named the boy Tavi, and had everyone controlling "elementals" as part of their magic, then it'd be on the squiffy side of copyright because I took a name, and an extremely similar story component to Jim's unique idea. In the case of fanfic, no one's even pretending that it's their original recipe. It's the same thing behind the lawsuit a long time ago where White Wolf Games sued the makers of the Underworld movie because of similarities to their game. One of the strongest arguments was the use of the specific term "abomination", a game term, used in the same way in the movie as it is in the game. They very well could have lost the case, but, they also have it on record that they attempted to protect their copyright so it's just as strong for next time.
Murphy's Stunt Double:
--- Quote from: neurovore on March 18, 2008, 03:33:33 PM --- Unless you want to use a definition such as "This story has people in it" as plagiarising the idea of "people", which strikes me as meaningless.
--- End quote ---
Which I think was the point... the concept of plagiarism can be stretched to an absolute absurd degree.
--- Quote from: neurovore on March 18, 2008, 03:33:33 PM ---There is no copyright to a plotline, just to a specific instance of that plotline.
--- End quote ---
Perhaps I used the word 'plotline' inappropriately, I meant to refer to the actual created story, which in fact may take many different books to play out.
And again, Noey, Copyright doesn't belong to ideas at all. Only to physical results of those ideas. What is actually written down.
Almost every time a big block buster film comes out, we're likely to see a couple of mock-offs hit the theaters soon after... or in some cases, just before, depending on how long it takes the big studios to get through production. Why? Because you can't sue for copyright infringement and WIN if someone takes your ideas, changes enough elements to make it reasonably dissimilar, and gets to the finish line ahead of you. It's a screenwriters worst nightmare.
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